My Discussions

MWSF 2007 keynote bingo

It's Illuminous!

I debated doing a MacWorld bingo card for a long time. At first, I was sure I wasn't going to create one. WWDC bingo was a cute diversion, but do I really want to commit to doing one of these for every Stevenote? I also didn't know if people would be hungry for more bingo after WWDC's bingo bust.

Both of these applications produce randomized bingo cards, which is in keeping with the actual game of bingo. It's also why I've decided to field my own card after all. I look at keynote bingo a bit differently. Unlike normal bingo, the point is not to give everyone an appropriately arbitrary chance of winning. In fact, winning is not the point at all.

The way I see it, the most important part of keynote bingo is the card itself. The choice and arrangement of squares documents the hopes and fears of the card maker, and perhaps the larger Mac community, at a particular point in time. And the detailed definitions for each square provide important context for each prediction.

Part of the game is figuring out when something in a square actually happens. The descriptions of each square explain the conditions under which they may be marked, but there's still some skill involved. For example, Jobs is not likely to come right out and say that Quartz 2D Extreme is enabled in Leopard, but he may hint at it or use marketing-speak to say the same thing. Your job is to catch this—and to be correct, of course.

Again, the subtle distinctions conveyed in the detailed descriptions of the squares come into play. Finally, there's the difficulty factor. A card that's too easy to win, stocked with gimmies like "Steve Jobs wears jeans," is no fun at all. On the other hand, a grid filled with fantastical squares ("Newton resurrected!") is pointless.

A win should be exciting, or at least surprising. If and when someone marks that final square to complete a row, it should be a momentous event. There should be at least one thing in that row that was previously thought to be ridiculous, unlikely, or too good to be true. A win should not be impossible, but should also not be extremely probable.

I've decided that I don't feel too bad about no one winning last year. If a win-less card reflects my inability to correctly gauge the probability of each square, then I'm fine with that. What I want to avoid is an intentionally fantastically unlikely card.

And so we come to it at last. Presenting my one-and-only MacWorld San Francisco 2007 keynote bingo card, provided in PDF format.

Experienced keynote bingo-ers may notice that some squares left unmarked at WWDC are carried over to the new card. This is as it should be, I think. A square that remains plausible enough to be on a bingo card, but is eternally left unmarked, says something important about the interplay between what Mac fans want and what Apple chooses to produce. And yes, there's a square for both "iPhone" and "No iPhone" because, at this point, either one is a story.

The rules for keynote attendees are the same as they were last year. If you're going to the keynote in person, print out the bingo card and play along live. The first person in the audience to win the game is expected to yell "BINGO!" loud enough so that the rest of us can hear it when we watch the keynote webcast video later. If we can't actually hear you, it's also acceptable if Steve Jobs hears you on stage and gives you The Glare.

The requirements for each square are listed at the end of this post. Good luck!

New app added to iWork - A new application is added to Pages and Keynote in the iWork bundle.

Leopard != $129 - Mac OS X Leopard single-user price is not $129.

Universal Adobe or MS Office demo - Any demonstration of a Universal binary build of any Adobe product or any part of Microsoft Office. I'll accept something less than a full-blown demo (e.g., just some screenshots or a marketing spiel) if you need this square to win, but it has to be delivered by an Adobe or Microsoft representative.

John Siracusa / John Siracusa has a B.S. in Computer Engineering from Boston University. He has been a Mac user since 1984, a Unix geek since 1993, and is a professional web developer and freelance technology writer.